X-Books Sales February 2013

[remydat]

Books have been cancelled when still selling more then X-Factor. X-Factor had like 200 issues under it's belt when it dropped below 25k. Legacy doesn't have that proven readership, it would do well to stop dropping a great deal further.

You are making my point for me. They were canceled either because their budgets were bigger, their target audience was bigger, or Marvel simply decided it wanted to go in a different direction. Not because of Sales. PAD puts out his book with little to no promotion and basically gets his 20-25k. Once you factor in international and digital sales not included in that number, you are looking at around 1.2 million yearly in revenue just from the comic alone. There is no way the book costs more than 1.2 million to produce so 20k a month in sales unless you had a massive promotion budget or are paying the writer some ridiculous amount of money is turning a profit. Hence why I am saying a guy like Bendis who is one of Marvel's highest paid writers needs to sell more books to justify his pay as well as the likely larger promotion budget he gets for his books.

Why? So every x-book should start with Wolverine as the main character? You know what is stupid? That marvel isn't promoting this book as hard as uxm (like uxm needed any marketing at all). The readership is disappointing. That's why we can't have nice things.

Yeah but you have to weigh the cost of promoting the book vs the expected increase in sales as a result. Spurrier is not a big name writer so XML doesn't need to sell as much in order for marvel to turn a profit. UXM has to because of Bendis and the larger promotion budget.

[Sundowhn]

Disney has made some pretty big mistakes in the past, regarding budget vs. return. Remydat has a point, as far as expected profits for each title and what the bottom line is to produce them.

I expect Bendis is probably one of the highest paid writers at Marvel, if not the highest paid one. The sheer amount of advertising done for ANXM and UXM is pretty staggering. These are titles with frequent variant covers, as well. He'd better write the top-selling X-books, with what Marvel sinks into them.

[Captain Buttocks]

Disney has made some pretty big mistakes in the past, regarding budget vs. return. Remydat has a point, as far as expected profits for each title and what the bottom line is to produce them.

I expect Bendis is probably one of the highest paid writers at Marvel, if not the highest paid one. The sheer amount of advertising done for ANXM and UXM is pretty staggering. These are titles with frequent variant covers, as well. He'd better write the top-selling X-books, with what Marvel sinks into them.

This is spot-on.

Variant covers are not drawn by artists for love of the product. They are paid for drawing them.

In-house comic ads have to go in at the expense of dvertising space, thus costing revenue - if you can get steady sales on non-superstar books, they grease the wheels so you can promote the unholy living Bejesus out of which ever Wolverine-does-stabby-stuff or Bendis-does-talky-stuff that floats your boat. When sales "level-out" i.e when retailers figure they are ordering enough to meet customer demand without having surplus stock cluttering the place up, someone at Marvel does some sums, and then fires writers/artists and replaces them with cheaper ones, or presses the "Kross-over Klaxon".

[remydat]

I think people also forget that sales of new books do not accurately reflect customer demand. Case in point. When Gambit #1 debuted with roughly the same sales as Hawkeye #1 that was not because 40k people bought the book. That was because retailers ordered 40k in books thinking it would sell that amount. So when a book starts out at 40k and settles in at 25k, it is not necessarily because it lost 15k in readers. More likely is retailers realised they ordered too many books and so they adjust their orders to reflect that because again, the sales numbers are based on what stores are ordering not what customers are buying.

From Marvel's perspective, they know Gambit is not going to sell 40k consistently because a) Gambit was not in a billion dollar movie. b) Gambit is not getting the budget that Hawkeye is getting and c) Gambit was a little used character who was mostly a villain or alleged traitor for the past 10 years preceding his solo. But they are not going to tell the retailers that when they can have the retailers order more books thinking it will sell more and thus make extra money due to the retailers inaccurate projections of customer demand.

[DevilishRogue]

Nightcrawler's the dad's choice in x-teleporter. Ergo, uncool.

Arent you a gen xer on the older end of the spectrum?

http://www.comicvine.com/myvine/the_...2012/75-41970/

She was after all four Ninja Turtles. Leonardo, Donatello and Michaelangelo were on the runner's up list with her. At least she scored slightly higher than Rocket Racoon.

Lol, I enjoyed Rocket Racoon.




No offense Pixie but it seems like you're really reaching, Kurt really isn't a sexist character because half of it is play. He is actually really humble about it unlike Scott or Logan. Plus, he's one of the few male x-characters that doesn't have an illegitimate child somewhere. Out of all the sexist cliche's with Wolverine, Cyclops and Gambit running around its strange you choose this one. There is enough room in the MU for both Kurt and Megan... I find your enthusiasm for Pixie admirable though.

[RoguefanAM]

Arent you a gen xer on the older end of the spectrum?



Lol, I enjoyed Rocket Racoon.




No offense Pixie but it seems like you're really reaching, Kurt really isn't a sexist character because half of it is play. He is actually really humble about it unlike Scott or Logan. Plus, he's one of the few male x-characters that doesn't have an iligitimate child somewhere. Out of all the sexist cliche's with Wolverine, Cyclops and Gambit running around its strange you choose this one. There is enough room in the MU for both Kurt and Megan... I find your enthusiasm for Pixie admirable though.

Huh, you know you're right on this. Most of the male X-men are pigs. Even Colossus has a illegitimate. So irresponsible.

[Jackraow21]

Who else has illegitimate kids besides Logan and Piotr? Not Cyclops or Gambit.

[Sundowhn]

Who else has illegitimate kids besides Logan and Piotr? Not Cyclops or Gambit.

Hmm, well Cyclops has Nathan, which is more of an abandoned/sent away child, then Rachel, who has been actively in the MU for a long time now. With Rach, you have to keep in mind that it was apparently a splinter universe. Both were conceived within a marriage, though. Cable has Hope, correct?

Rumour is that Iceman has one or there was the question of one, I think. Seems like I read something like that. As far as Remy goes, I wouldn't bank on it that he doesn't. :P He's been shown to get around. I seem to recall some scenes with disgruntled females in the past.

@DRogue Yeah, I always saw the flirtatious Nightcrawler thing as more the antics of someone trying to make people smile. He was shown with a real sense of humour about how he looked and people's reaction to it. He always seemed to try and use flippant charm to try and diffuse any tension people might feel around him. He also often seemed pretty surprised if a woman ever tried to take him up on it.

[chakal]

Uncanny X-Men doesn't need any promotion, because it will sell anyway, even if it was written by a 5 year old kid.
All they had to do is point out that there is a new Uncanny X-Men book, and that's it.

Legacy needs marketing, because otherwise, how people can know that this book is great? The trick is "how" to promote the book. You don't have to spend gazillions of dollar to successfully promote a book. You need to hit the target audience and tell them: "if you're looking for book with this and that, here is your book". But marvel did none of that. How many vertigo fans know about this book? How many people looking for something more intelligent, and ambitious know about this book?

Legacy is a question mark for now. But it's one that will never be a superstar, but one that can be a stable profit, like X-Factor.